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Toronto Community Housing leads green push

The Humber Blvd. building seems an unlikely headquarters for Toronto's fight against climate change.

The 14-storey highrise near Weston Road and St. Clair Ave. looks like just another rundown Toronto Community Housing dwelling – dirty brown brick, smeared glass doors and rusty garbage bin slumped by the entrance.

But step inside the lobby, and the first sign of the green revolution brewing within comes from a poster: "Recycling is Awesome."

On a tour, the manager points out all the green fixtures: low-flow toilets and shower heads in all 215 apartments; energy-efficient fridges, stoves and washers; compact fluorescent light bulbs in every socket; new and well-sealed balcony doors; and, in the basement, four spanking new efficient boilers. The exhaust is recaptured on the roof and used to preheat the air circulating into the hallways.

Surprised? It's not just this Toronto Community Housing building. The green revolution is hitting virtually every one of the non-profit corporation's 2,000 buildings across the city.

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While the country has waffled on even the most basic commitment to addressing global warming, Toronto's social housing has almost doubled its own pledge to cut its greenhouse gases by 40 per cent by 2020 (using 2000 as the base year.)

So far, the housing corporation has spent around $90 million on energy retrofits and thus cut its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 19,000 tonnes – the equivalent of taking about 10,000 cars off the road every year.

"We've been leading the way in the last few years in terms of energy-efficient appliances and low-flow toilets," says Kier Brownstone, Toronto Community Housing's green plan manager. "If we need to lead the way in terms of renewable energy, we will ... It's inspiring."

Inspiring not just because the 164,000 residents already have relatively small ecological footprints – "they're not living in 3,000-square-foot houses in the suburbs and driving their SUVs 50 miles to work and back every day," as Brownstone puts it. But also because their landlord has problems big enough to excuse it from environmental activism – a $300-million repair backlog, a waiting list of 65,000, and high levels of crime in many of its complexes, including the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Keyon Campbell last month in northeast Scarborough.

The motivation wasn't ethical. Every year, a third of the non-profit corporation's operating budget was gobbled up by electricity and water bills. Reduce those and there'd be more cash for basic maintenance, the theory went.

"We started looking at this as a purely economic equation," says Derek Ballantyne, the corporation's chief executive officer. "Then we got religious about this stuff."

For example, all new buildings will generate their own electricity or heat, including the Regent Park redevelopment, where a $50-million "community energy system" will heat and cool units partly using solar energy. Plans are afoot to install wind turbines on some older buildings near the lake. Toronto Community Housing has introduced a green procurement policy – choosing environmentally sensitive suppliers that use less packaging, for instance. It's chucking all toxic cleaning products and paint, opting for natural products instead.

And this summer, the corporation rolled out a recycling campaign that aims to divert 10,000 tonnes of garbage from landfill by the end of next year, and about 30,000 tonnes by 2015. That's 70 per cent of its garbage – the city's overall goal – but it's all the more astounding when you consider that an average Toronto apartment building recycles only 13 per cent of its trash.

Already, in buildings like Humber Blvd., the results are evident. Recycling bins that once sat empty are now overflowing, and residents are demanding secondary containers. The solution, in part, was to simply move recycling bins inside the buildings, so residents didn't have to tromp through the snow. But it's also education and community engagement. Posters about recycling have gone up in 18 languages. Special sturdy, blue bags to collect recycling have gone out to tenants. And local residents have been commissioned to lead the charge.

"It's a matter of satisfaction," says tenant Sushil Bajpai, a 71-year-old former real-estate broker and one of eight volunteers for Humber Boulevard and the surrounding area. "I am doing something for my community at large."

This summer, his building reclaimed a span of concrete, tilling a small plot for flowers. Residents who had never spoken before gardened together.

"We believe by building a more connected community, it will become a healthier community," says Kimberley Garrett, community-housing manager for the area.

Humber Blvd. residents also gained new kitchen cupboards, which many had wanted for years. The money came from savings in electricity and water bills.

"So the community sees the results of its efforts," Ballantyne says.

He admits his plan is hugely ambitious. Toronto Community Housing's 2,000 buildings add up to the city's leading greenhouse-gas culprits. Although 19,000 tonnes is a lot, it's only a 5 per cent cut to the corporation's overall emissions. That leaves 35 per cent – or 136,000 tonnes – more to go.

"What is interesting for me," says Ballantyne, "(is that) we are slowly changing our own behaviour and the behaviour of the people who live in our communities. So, am I optimistic that we're going to make really significant change? Yeah. If we don't set an aggressive benchmark, then I don't think we'll achieve an aggressive target."

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